The student several times was at the point of closing the book from sheer annoyance. Only the knowledge that he had nothing else to do, and the desire to gain instruction, caused him to persevere. His temper only was logical in so far as it endowed him with the faculty of pursuance. He began many things: he followed them: oftentimes the influence of Luna on his environment obliged him to pause: but invariably he returned to them—even after long years he returned to them—; and then, slowly, surely, he concluded what he had begun. He had tenacity—the feline pertinacity of vigorous untainted English blood. Cigarette after cigarette he rolled, and smoked. He frequently turned back and read a chapter over again. Flavio mewed for admittance. He took him on his knee: and continued reading, stroking the little cat meanwhile, tickling his larynx till he purred content. So the dull March afternoon passed. At five, the maid brought a tray containing black coffee and dripping toast. At half-past six, he took a bath and attended to his appearance, execrating the pain of his swollen arm and the difficulty of keeping it out of the water. He dined at half-past seven on some soup, and haricot-beans with butter, and a baked apple. Meanwhile he counted the split infinitives in the day’s Pall Mall Gazette. When he was adolescent, an Oxford tutor had said of him that he possessed a critical faculty of no mean order. At the time, he had not understood the saying perfectly: but he cultivated the faculty. He taught himself in a very bitter school, the arts of selection and discrimination, and the art of annihilating rubbish. To this perhaps was due his complete psychical detachment from other men. He trod upon so many worms. And few things are more exasperating than a man of whom it truly may be said “A chiel’s amang ye takin’ notes.” After dinner, he returned to his attic with his cup and the coffeepot: and resumed his task. In time, he forgot the pain of his arm: he even forgot the usual terrified anticipation of the late postman’s knock, such was his faculty for concentration. He smoked cigarettes and sipped black coffee now and then, oblivious of Flavio who returned from a walk about eleven and promptly went to sleep on the foot of the bed. A little after midnight, he reached the end of the book: turned back and examined the last chapter again; and put it down.
“Yes,” he said, “she’s a dear good woman. Her book—well—her book is cheap, awkward, vulgar—but it’s good. It’s unpalteringly ugly and simple and good. Evidently it’s best to be good. It pays. … Anyhow it’s bound to pay in the long run.”
He pushed Flavio’s chair to the wall near the door: by its side he placed the washstand from the left of his armchair. He disposed the armchair also against the wall, leaving a cleared space of garret-coloured drugget between the dead fire and the bed. This was his gymnasium.
“If a book like that pays,” he reflected, “it must be that there’s a lot of people who care for books about the Good. Why not do one of that sort instead of casting folklore and history before publishers who turn and rend you? The pity is that the Good should be so dreadfully dowdy. Evidently το καλον and το ἀγαθον are just as distinct as they were in the days of the Broad-browed One. Sophisms again! Why can’t you be honest and simple instead of subtle and complex? You’re just like your own cat ambuscading a ping-pong ball as strategically and as scrupulously as though it were a mouse. For goodness’ sake don’t try to deceive yourself. It’s all very well to pose before the world: but there’s no one here to see you now. Strip, man, strip stark. You perfectly know that the Good always is admirable, whether it be dowdy or chic; and that what you call the Beautiful is no more than a matter of opinion, worth—well, generally speaking, not worth six and eightpence.”
He threw all his clothes on the armchair: picked his trousers out of the heap and folded them lengthwise over the towel-rail: powdered his arm with borax and bound cotton-wool over it: looked at his dumbbells while he brushed his hair: sprayed the room with eucalyptus; and got into bed. Extreme fatigue and pain rendered him almost hysterical. His thoughts expressed themselves in ejaculations when he had tied a handkerchief over his eyes, straightened his legs, and laid his right cheek on the pillow.
“Yes! It pays to be good—just simple goodness pays. I know, oh I know. I always knew it.
“God, if ever You loved me, hear me, hear me. De profundis ad Te, ad Te clamavi. Don’t I want to be good and clean and happy? What desire have I cherished since my boyhood save to serve in the number of Your mystics? What but that have I asked of You Who made me?
“Not a chance do You give me—ever—ever—.
“Listen! How can I serve You? How be happy, clean, or good, while You keep me so sequestered?
“Oh I know of that psalm where it is written that You set apart for Yourself the godly. Am I godly? Ah no: nor even goodly. I’m Your prisoner writhing in my fetters, fettered, impotent, utterly unhappy.
“Only he, who is good and clean, is happy. I am clean, God, but neither good nor happy. Not alone can a man be good or happy. Force, which generates no one thing, is not force. All intelligence must be active, potent. I’m intelligent. So, O God, You made me. Therefore I must be active. Of my
